Chattanooga Symphony & Opera - Opening Night: Firebird

Les Sylphides

Frédéric Chopin

Les Sylphides
Frédéric Chopin
(b. March 1, 1810 west of Warsaw, Poland; d. October 17, 1849 in Paris)

Let’s take up the story of Les Sylphides with the seism that was its premiere in June 1909 at Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet and then work backward and forward. That performance launched Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and the careers of its stars Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova, and others. Les Sylphides gets credited as the first plotless ballet, a “romantic reverie” in the words of Michel Fokine its choreographer. The notion of dancing to existing music by masters was new to ballet at the time. Six Chopin pieces settled on by Fokine and Diaghilev orchestrated at Diaghilev’s behest by established Russian stars Anatoly Lyadov, Sergei Taneyev, and Nikolai Tcherepnin. Diaghilev took a chance and gave two pieces to young Igor Stravinsky whose work he had heard at a private performance earlier that year. A seventh piece orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov years earlier also was included. The firsts and the amassed starpower were boffo and the popular and critical acclaim, enduring.

The precursor ballet performances to the music of Chopin were the work of Michel Fokine. He envisioned dancing in the work of Glazunov who arranged four Chopin pieces as an orchestral suite he called Chopiniana. Fokine prevailed on Glazunov to add one more piece, creating a ballet performed several times in Russia and also called Chopiniana.

It is fair to say that Chopin’s life divides in two, in Poland as a vigorous youth writing large pieces including piano works with orchestra and Frédéric, the reclusive composer in Paris, content to be the mourning expat. It mattered a great deal to his musical output as well. For the rest of his life, big pieces were few and almost everything was salon music, deeply personal, often tinged with sadness. In late 1830 he left Poland for Vienna and while there he learned of the Polish Nationalist rebellion and its brutal suppression by the occupying Russian army. Although homesick he would not go back to face the dispirited scene. He went on to Paris never to return to Poland.

Chopin’s salon music, mostly cast in dance forms but according to Chopin’s idiosyncratic temperament, were the feedstock that Glazunov and Fokine drew on and Diaghilev added to. It is a credit to their judgment that still today seven pieces are immutable as the music of Les Sylphides.

These are the canonical selections:
Prelude in A major, Op. 28, No. 7 (reused as curtain-raiser)
Nocturne in A♭ major, Op. 32, No. 2
Waltz in G♭ major, Op. 70, No. 1
Mazurka in D major, Op. 33, No. 2
Mazurka in C major, Op. 67, No. 3
Prelude in A major, Op. 28, No. 7
Waltz in C♯ minor, Op. 64, No. 2
Grande valse brillante in E♭ major, Op. 18

Some notes on the individual pieces:

Nocturne in A♭ major, Op. 32, No. 2 (1836-37)
Serenely melodic with lush harmonies. Its lyrical, sentimental quality establishes the ballet's romantic, atmospheric tone.

Waltz in G♭ major, Op. 70, No. 1 (1832)
Composed early in Chopin’s Paris years, it is archetypical of the salon-like character of his small pieces of that era. In the structure of the ballet it bridges from the atmospherics of the Nocturne to the more boisterous Mazurkas.

Mazurka in D major, Op. 33, No. 2 (1837-38)

Mazurka in C major, Op. 67, No. 3 (1835)
Chopin wrote a total of 58 Mazurkas that have been published. A mazurka is a traditional Polish folk dance that Chopin made his own genre. These two, in the context of the ballet, let the sylphs show some life as they navigate syncopated rhythms.

Prelude in A major, Op. 28, No. 7 (1836-39)
One piece of Chopin that is universally known, it is also the shortest of the preludes. Just as it set the dreamlike, pastoral tone for the ballet before the curtain rose, it brings the ballet home to its roots.

Waltz in C♯ minor, Op. 64, No. 2 (1847)
A beautiful extension, perhaps a denouement, fitting with the arc of the ballet. It was the one surviving selection orchestrated by Glazunov for Fokine’s Chopiniana ballet.

Grande valse brillante in E♭ major, Op. 18 (1833)
An exuberant conclusion, rather like the way a reprise of a favorite tune can back up the curtain call of a broadway show. The stars and the whole corps de ballet celebrate.

Although Les Sylphides has remained a popular fixture at the ballet and in the concert hall presenting the same seven pieces, there have been many different arrangements and orchestrations. Benjamin Britten’s orchestration was believed lost, but was found in the archives of the American Ballet Theatre in 2013. Maurice Ravel’s version remains lost. The version by Roy Douglas from 1936 has been recorded many times. Tonight we hear the orchestration by William McDermott.